Run No More
by Agent Malkere
Summary: Mal has a muzzled madman in his cargo hold, but thankfully River has it covered.
1. Chapter 1

Mal would like it to be known that this time the job going south was not his fault. He'd been hired to smuggle five women and their protector off a restricted Rim planet. Nobody had said anything about outrunning war parties or wide-eyed, _feng le_ maniacs with shotguns. Or letting any said _feng le_ maniacs onto the ship. In the end it had come down to two choices: take off with the maniac on board or have his ship torn apart by some jumped up warlord.

Now one of the women they'd been hired to smuggle out was in the infirmary while Simon worked frantically to remove the two bullets she'd taken to the torso before she bled out, River was flying the ship, and Mal and his client were staring down the barrel of the _feng le_ maniac's shotgun. The maniac was at least four inches shorter than Mal, stocky, dirty, and had a _gorram_ metal _muzzle_ on his face with a length of broken chain trailing down his back. He looked feral. He also seemed completely unconcerned by the fact that both Zoe and Jayne had guns trained on him. Their client, a steely woman with a mechanical arm who had introduced herself as Furiosa, was standing between the madman and the four uninjured women in her care. Her eyes were sharp, like she was searching for the smallest opening to make her move. It was a standoff, and Mal had the distinct and unpleasant feeling that he was about to get shot again.

"They're not here." Mal wasn't sure if he felt more like groaning or rejoicing at the lilting sound of River's voice. Apparently she wasn't flying the ship anymore, which hopefully meant that they were a safe distance into the black. Out of the corner of his eye, Mal caught sight of her as she drifted across the cargo hold on silent feet. "There's no blue in Serenity's heart – only brown." For the first time, the maniac's grip on his gun shivered ever so slightly and then steadied again.

"Stay," River abruptly ordered, pointing an accusing finger at Furiosa without glancing in her direction. A hint of shock flickered across the woman's face, and she shifted her weight almost imperceptibly back on her feet. River was still weaving her way slowly towards the maniac. "Not going to take you back." The maniac growled at her and took a half step back, his shoulders pressing into a stack of crates. "No more red thieves." She paused and tilted her head to one side. Then she turned to an empty patch of air to the maniac's left and snapped, "Be quiet!" This time the maniac's eyes didn't just widen in shock – the barrel of his gun drooped several inches. River turned back to him and nodded. "Yes. About ten years after you." The gun drooped further still. "No more hands of blue. No more red thieves." River was only a few feet away from him now. She stopped. Tilted her head again as if listening. "Don't have to run anymore." She leaned forward, her voice soft as a whisper, yet seeming to reach every corner of the hold, "Put down the gun, Max."

The gun clattered to the ground.

* * *

 _A/N: Thanks for reading! Originally I found myself wondering, "Wouldn't it be interesting if Mad Max and Firefly were in the same universe? After all, in Firefly 'the Earth got used up.' Maybe Max and the others are some of the people who got left behind on 'Earth-That-Was.'" And somehow that idea turned into this instead. I might write another chapter or two of this story - we'll see.  
_


	2. Chapter 2

Once, long ago, Furiosa had been an idealist. She'd dreamed of a better 'verse – believed in it right down to the marrow of her bones. It hadn't been a hard decision to sign on with the Browncoats after her mother's untimely and Alliance-related death. Furiosa had hugged Keeper and Valkyrie goodbye and left her home on Demeter to fight for what she believed was _right_. That all seemed so very long ago now, like it had happened to someone else. Now, Furiosa didn't know what she believed in except that she wanted to make the Alliance hurt. Hurt for leaving her and the rest of her battalion to die in the half-terraformed wastes of Citadel. Hurt for leaving them at the mercy of the madman Immortan Joe. Hurt for making her watch as one by one her fellows died while she lived on. Hurt for what she had had to become to survive.

Furiosa couldn't make the Alliance hurt – not by herself – but she could hurt Joe. She could steal what was most precious to him and escape the restricted prison planet and maybe, maybe find redemption somewhere out there in the black. (Maybe she could find her way back home.) And the remaining traces of the young woman who had once believed in something more, something better, wanted to help these women, because she couldn't save all the innocents on Citadel, but these five she could save.

It had taken time, patience, planning, and luck, and even then it had almost all been for naught. Their luck had seemed to run out – they'd never make the rendezvous point with three war parties baring down on them and a feral wastelander hijacking himself a ride with them. The only reason the wastelander hadn't let them be run to ground by the war parties was because Furiosa had looked him dead in the eye and asked if he wanted off this planet. Then Angharad had been shot once, twice, and just as it seemed that all hope would bleed out with her, there was the ship waiting for them. By the time Immortan Joe was screaming impotently before the abandoned War Rig, Serenity was breaking atmosphere.

Furiosa wasn't sure that she believed in miracles anymore, but this… this felt a little like a miracle. Even with the possibility that Angharad could die still lingering in the air, it still felt disturbingly miraculous. The ship had a doctor on board – a full-fledged surgeon. The captain still wore a brown coat like the one Furiosa had once had. The strange girl had just stopped the wastelander from shooting anyone.

Behind Furiosa, Cheedo let out a small, choked sound of relief as Captain Reynolds kicked the shotgun to the other side of the hold, far out of the wastelander's reach.

"The ship on course?" Captain Reynolds asked the strange girl. She nodded, her gaze never leaving the wastelander's face.

"No one to follow us, and by the time the Alliance hears they'll be days behind."

"And the _yesheng de fengzi_?" added Captain Reynolds. 'Feral madman.' Yes, Furiosa thought that that summed up the wastelander quite nicely.

The strange girl shot Captain Reynolds the briefest of dirty looks and corrected,

" _Max_." She returned her attention to… Max. He was watching her with a wary yet slightly dazed expression. "He didn't get delivered in a box like me, but he came from the same source." There was something in her voice uncomfortably like empathy.

" _Huh choo-shung tza-jiao duh tzang-huo_." The captain ran an agitated hand through his hair.

The strange girl looked up at the catwalk where a beast of a man and lethal-looking woman still had guns trained on Max.

"No, you can't just shoot him anyway! Go ask Kaylee for bolt cutters."

The huge man growled, but Captain Reynolds sent him a glare of his own,

"Do what she said." Captain Reynolds turned back to the strange girl. "I'm trusting your judgement on this one, 'Tross. He better not hurt anyone."

The girl – 'Tross? – nodded but wasn't really paying attention to him anymore.

Captain Reynolds put on a false smile that didn't convince anyone and turned to Furiosa and her uninjured fellows.

"Well, ladies, welcome aboard _Serenity_. This here is River, our co-pilot, and up on the catwalk is my first mate, Zoe. How about I show you to the passenger quarters until things calm down in the hold some?"

Furiosa didn't like the idea of the wastelander loose on the ship. She glanced back at Dag, Capable, Cheedo, and Toast.

"Go get settled in – I'll keep an eye on things here."

Dag made a belligerent face but followed the captain anyway.

"They heard you," Cheedo murmured to Dag, her voice thin with shock and weighted with wondered. "Someone heard you, and they sent us an angel."

"An angel?" asked Dag skeptically.

"This ship," Cheedo's words were still dreamy and her hands were starting to shake with the aftershocks of adrenaline, "it's an angel. Whoever heard you sent us an angel."

Captain Reynolds stumbled over his own feet, and for just a second there was something old and dark and grief-worn in his eyes. Then he continued to lead the way to the passenger quarters.

They weren't going far – the ship wasn't big. If they yelled, Furiosa would hear them. Her pistol was still heavy on her hip with three rounds left and she had one knife hidden on her body as well. She watched as River continued to murmur seeming nonsense to Max as they waited for the bolt cutters. Around them _Serenity_ 's inner-workings hummed like a half-forgotten lullaby, and for a moment Furiosa thought she almost caught the scent of fresh budded leaves. The vibrations buzzed against the soles of her boots as the ship pulled them farther and farther away from Citadel – farther and farther out into the black. It felt, just a touch, like hope.


End file.
